Classroom Newsletter January 20, 2014

Language Arts

Journal Writing – The words “this” and “that” have been introduced.  We now know I, a, the, is, it, in, to, at, are, for, on, of, my, and, he, this, that, and his.  I have also added the words “her” and “she” to the word ring.  They are not “official” kindergarten words but they are words which the children are seeing and using frequently in their reading and writing.  The children are working on writing at least two sentences in their weekly journal entry.  We have been working on adding a reaction sentence to what we are writing about, for example how we felt when we did something and why we felt that way.  The children’s writing is becoming more detailed and interesting.

Guided Reading – We reviewed the sight words listed above.  We read books focusing on the words “this” / “that”.  The children are able to sustain “Read to Self” time for 15 minutes.   They are also doing “Read to Someone” time for 15 minutes.  Many of the expectations for “Read to Someone” time are the same as those for “Read to Self” time.   The children work quietly.  They get started right away.  They stay in one spot and read the whole time.  The children sit side by side and both of them have their eyes on the book.  They may choose to take turns reading the same book or they may choose to each read a different book to their partner.  The children also have the opportunity to “Listen to Reading” on the iPads.  We have downloaded a selection of books onto Storia from Scholastic.  Having the children reading independently allows me to meet with small groups and individuals to read books at students’ individual reading levels or to provide additional support as needed on other skills.
 
Fundations – We continue to review the letter formation for upper and lower case letters.  We have done activities distinguishing between when to use a period and when to use a question mark.  As always, we review the proper use of capitals for the beginning letter in a sentence as well as in people’s names.  The children are becoming skilled at tapping out, reading, and spelling CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words.  We remind the children to use this skill in their reading as well as in their writing and that it is not just a skill to be used in isolation.

Literacy Centers – We continue with our theme of snow and winter.
We read two different versions of The Mitten and talked about how the stories were alike and how they were different.  We practiced retelling the story by putting the animals in order on a piece of yarn and using sequencing words such as first, then, next, after that, last or finally  when retelling.

Math

We continue to focus on reading and writing numerals 0 – 20.  We are comparing and ordering groups of up to 20 objects.  The children are using ten frame boards to help them in their work.  They are learning that when a ten frame board is full there are always ten.  When there are two ten frame boards side by side and the first ten frame is full, they can count on from ten to get to the higher number shown.  The children are developing a solid understanding of the terms more, fewer, greater than, and less than.

In Chapter 7 we will work on recognizing and describing the characteristics of basic solid (three-dimensional) shapes and flat (two-dimensional) shapes.

Science and Health

In Science we continue with our unit on Properties of Materials.  We learned about the properties of solids – they can be touched and they keep their shape.  We explored buttons, rocks, shells, and pom poms.  We shared many different descriptive words during our exploration.
Next week we will be attending an enrichment program that will provide us with the opportunity to explore and discuss the properties of bubbles.